European Union leaders will meet later today to hear a last-ditch proposal by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi aimed at saving talks on a new EU constitution from failure.
Few leaders were optimistic a breakthrough was possible in the core dispute over national voting rights, in which Germany and France line up against Spain and Poland.
The row stems from a summit in Nice in 2000 which gave Poland and Spain nearly the same voting rights as Germany, whose population is nearly twice as large as theirs.
The new constitution would replace this with a system under which most decisions are taken by a majority of more than half of EU states, representing over 60 percent of its population.
Poland and Spain resist this, while Germany and France are determined to push it through. Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said there were no signs of agreement. "I cannot rule out a common European failure," he said.
French President Jacques Chirac told a news conference that the position of Spain and Poland was "incompatible with the vision we have of an enlarged Europe".
Spain's Foreign Minister Ana Palacio rejected this. "Europe is built by everyone and here nobody, not a founder, nor the most populous, nor the least populous, nor the most recent, can kidnap the European interest," she told a briefing.
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said a deal was still possible. "I give it a fair chance that the Italians will solve it," he told reporters. "They will find a compromise but first we need a mini-crisis, and that also belongs to this process."
Leaders of the 15 current EU members and the 10 states due to join next year are in Brussels to hammer out the EU's first constitution, intended to supersede a series of complex treaties which have become unwieldy and threaten gridlock in the Union.
Berlusconi, host of the summit as Italy holds the rotating EU presidency, will release amendments early today for leaders to consider before talks resume at 1000 GMT).
His team was drawing them up overnight after bilateral meetings with leaders to explore their differences. But it was clear the vote-weighting row was the most important.